Betty Rosbottom - Sunday Soup: A Years Worth of Mouth-Watering, Easy-to-Make Recipes

SUNDAY SOUP

A Years Worth of Mouthwatering, Easy-to-Make Recipes

BY BETTY ROSBOTTOM | PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHARLES SCHILLER

DEDICATION

To my aunt Betty Mullen, with love, gratitude, and admiration.

Sunday Soup has been a joyous project from beginning to end, in large measure due to the wonderful people who have helped me with it. Mary Francis came on board at the outset and oversaw every facet. She got recipes to testers and worked alongside me in the kitchen. Using her stellar computer skills, she transferred myriad notes into decipherable bytes. I have run out of synonyms for thank you to Mary.

Emily Bell has worked with me on six books and once again shared her amazingly creative talents to help develop the recipes for this one. Sheri Lisak, my longtime assistant and tireless worker, never said no even when I begged her to test a recipe over and over again. Ellen Ellis, writer par excellence, helped me fine-tune the text and find my voice. To Barbara Morse, Jane Giat, Deb Brown, and Barbara OConnor: Bless you for taking time away from your own busy careers to do soup-cooking with me.

Many volunteers tested the recipes in this collection with passion, but with no compensation besides the dishes they created. Their feedback was invaluable. I am indebted most especially to Marilyn Dougherty, Betty Orsega, and Jackie Murrill, and also to Marilyn and Chuck Cozad, Suzanne Goldberg, Cindy Pizzanelli, Tini Sawicki, Joyce Austen, and Ron Parent.

A big hug to my editor, Bill LeBlond, who not only asked me to do another book for Chronicle Books, but also helped me find the perfect subjectsoup. Amy Treadwell at Chronicle shared her time and editorial expertise willingly. Thanks to Charles Schiller for the exquisite photographs, to Susan Vajaranant for the gorgeous food styling, and to Katie Heit for the books fabulous design.

Lisa Ekus, my agent, was excited about this project from its earliest stages and, along with Jane Falla, provided the support that made the proposal a winner.

I would also like to thank my husband, a true soup aficionado, who sampled for supper almost every night an endless stream of chilies, chowders, gumbos, sopas, and zuppeeven when they were far from their perfected states. And to my family, Mike, Heidi, Edie, and Griffin: Thanks for loving food and never saying no to soup!

Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,
Game or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for two
Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?

LEWIS CARROLL, Alices Adventures in Wonderland

As a young girl growing up in the deep South, I was surrounded by homemade foods of every sortplatters piled high with fried chicken, fresh vegetables cooked every which way, piping hot cornbread sticks, made-from-scratch cakes, and luscious icebox pies were part of my heritage. But not soup! Perhaps the winter season was just too short to inspire what my mother must have thought of as cold-weather cooking. During the brief January cold spell, she went straight to the cupboard and reached for tins of canned soup. Tomato and cream of mushroom were her tried-and-true favorites. With the single exception of a delicious seafood gumbo that my grandmother routinely prepared, the soups of my youth came from a can.

I was nearly grown before I learned that soup can brim with fresh flavors and that it can be enjoyed in any season. A year in France was a revelation. When I was a junior in college, I went abroad and lived with a wonderful family in Dijon for the first few weeks. My host mother served the main meal, or dner, in the middle of the day; in the evenings, we often had soup with a salad or an omelette and, of course, a crusty baguette. I can still see Madame Paquet in her small but well-equipped kitchen, standing in front of a pot of simmering liquids. Her potages were simple and often made from leftovers, but to this day I purr with delight when I think of the glorious smells that wafted throughout that apartment on soup nights. Later that year, I arrived in Paris to go to the Sorbonne, and was amazed to discover that the humble vegetable soups served in my dorms restaurant were just as tempting. And so began my love affair with soup. Its been several decades now and my ardor has never waned.

When I first entertained the idea of doing a soup cookbook, I was ecstaticjust the thought of assembling a collection of my best recipes made me smile. This would be more play than work, I reasoned, but how wrong I was! Assembling recipes when youre a full-time professional cook (as I am) is not so hard, but deciding how to organize those recipes so that readers can use them optimally and effortlessly can be a challenge. After toying with multiple approaches, I finally decided that soup-makers everywhere could use a book organized by the seasons of the year. For chilly or cold days, there would be lots of robust fall and winter entries. For warmer weather or on days when the temps are soaring, plenty of light or chilled soups would fill the spring and summer chapters. To make things even easier, I also put together a Soup Calendara sort of illustrated table of contentsfor at-a-glance inspiration. Turn to this handy reference on pages 8 and 9 whenever you need fresh, seasonal ideas for soups to serve.

In my kitchen, I make soups all through the year, and in this collection, youll find a years worth of my favorites, perfect for ladling up any day, any season. There are spicy chilies, rich gumbos, blissful bisques, and steaming chowders to counter the cold, plus icy creations like gazpacho and vichyssoise done up with new twists to stave off summers heat. Inspiration for these soups comes from near and far. Some recipes are ), are influenced by our neighbors south of the border. Still others trace their origins from Europe and Asia.

As a cooking teacher, I have learned that home cooks often need more information than many recipes typically provide, such as detailed explanations of cooking techniques and where to buy unfamiliar ingredients. So in the recipes that follow, Ive included At The Market Notes with helpful shopping tips, as well as Cooking Tips to help make every soup a success. At a glance, you can see how long it takes to make any of these soups from start to finish and what portion of that is prep time. Youll also see whether a soup can be completely or partially prepared ahead.